The first one took me back to 1938 and my childhood memory of that famous movie, The Wizard of Oz, and its theme song by Judy Garland— "Somewhere Over The Rainbow."

The second flash-back took me to Madonna House back in the ’60s and the rainbows in Oz, Ontario.

For any of you who may not know, The Wizard of Oz was one of the most-watched and beloved films in North America for almost 50 years.

It is about a young schoolgirl, Dorothy, who lives what she considers a rather dreary and hard life on a poor farm in Kansas, U.S.A. while she dreams and sings of a better place "somewhere over the rainbow."

After a head injury during a tornado, she dreams herself in a mysterious fantasy land named Oz. There she finally comes to realize that she already had everything she ever wanted back on that little farm in Kansas. But, how to get back there?

The secret was very simple: all Dorothy had to do was to click together three times the special red shoes she had received when she first came to Oz, make her wish, and, voila, there she was back in Kansas, happy as a lark.

I always had an Oz flash-back whenever I heard Judy Garland sing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," which became her personal theme song.

It took me a while to realize that every time I heard that song, I was back in 1938, just before the war, where I saw life as future things, which always seemed to be somewhere over the rainbow.

That was the way it was until I went to Oz in the 1960’s—or at least is seemed like Oz to me at first. It was better known as Madonna House in Combermere, Ontario.

For there it seemed like everything was wondrous and miraculous. I came and went for a number of years. These were always short visits, and I had the same experience every time of my own little spiritual Oz.

Then one summer I came to stay for a longer visit, and suddenly I was in Kansas where everyday life seemed very dreary and hard for me and where faith was no longer about things here and now but rather about things "somewhere over the rainbow."

That is, until…

It was a typically hard day in what was an especially hot August. That day, during supper, the blessed rains came with all the thunder and lightening of a Kansas tornado from The Wizard of Oz. Then suddenly the rain stopped, and people were jumping up from the dinner tables and heading to the front of the house.

At first I thought there had been some kind of an accident. But what with all the dramatic "ooohs" and "ahhhs," I joined the crowd and finally found an open space from which to see whatever it was everyone was ooh-ing and ahh-ing about.

I couldn’t believe it: it was just a rainbow over the river. And while everyone else oooh’d and ahhh’d, all I was thinking about was being somewhere over the damn rainbow, somewhere out of Combermere, Ontario.

Not too many hot days later, it happened again. And once again all the little Madonna House Munchkins were ooohing and ahhhing like they had just seen the wonderful wizard of Oz.

I’d had enough! I went off to poustinia—not to pray but just to get away from those crazy people.

There, in my boredom, I decided to start reading the Bible from the beginning. I only got as far as chapter 9 of Genesis and the rainbow covenant with Noah. Then my stunted mind started desperately trying to silence my tender heart again.

Mind: "Didn’t the rainbow already exist before the Genesis story? It’s a normal phenomenon of sunlight and drops of water, and these had been around long before Noah. So how could God have ‘set his bow in the clouds’ after the flood if it already existed before the flood? Isn’t this really Oz with a biblical twist?"

Heart: "Ooooh!" "Ahhhh!" "Ooooh!" "Ahhhh!"

Well, the battle went on for quite a while, but before I left that poustinia, I knew that the rainbow about which Dorothy sang her plaintive and simple melody in The Wizard of Oz was not the rainbow of Genesis. It may have been the same physical phenomenon, but it was not the same sign.

In Genesis, God tells us that we are not to look "somewhere over the rainbow" but straight into it where we see, through the heat and sweat of the day, the colorful vision of God’s own presence telling us: "I am right here! And this is my sign of it!"

The Genesis rainbow finally revealed to me that my life is not a fantasy about things "somewhere over the rainbow," but a sign that God was setting about to change all of that in me and personally chose the rainbow as a new sign of that change!

And then I realized what those crazy people were oohing and ahhing about: they knew that God was giving them a visible sign, right then and there, in the sudden appearance of an ordinary rainbow while they were doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing. (They called it, "the duty of the moment.")

In those short rainbow moments, they were oohing and ahhing God’s fidelity to that promise.

Everafter, for me the rainbow was not about fantasy but revelation, not about The Wizard of Oz but Genesis and God, not about Dorothy’s plaintive song but God’s own resourcefulness with creation.

I was back in Reality for the first time in a very long time.

P.S. Let me tell you, there are some awesome rainbows right outside our front windows in Everyday, Ontario! And we know exactly Who’s doin’ it and why.

Click. Click. Click.